h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

That it seems to be an unavoidable part of human nature that to really appreciate something you have to go without it first, or experience the exact opposite for a short time. Take this past week for instance.

Things got a bit radio rental at work what with one thing and another, and most of us ended up working at least one double shift, or a 12-hour at the least, and one of us (me) ended up working a double shift only eight hours after a normal shift. I really don't mind long shifts, in fact I quite like them if it means I can work four days and get three days off. That's one extra day I don't have to deal with the mungheads who ride the buses in this town and the mungheads who drive them.

But I draw the line well before working 24 hours out of 32 and being up for 40 hours.

However, I had the following two days off, and oh my Bob, did they feel good It's quite a while since I've had two days off in a row - a proper weekend (even though it happened on Thursday and Friday rather than Sat and Sun). Because of the double shift I also have today off, after working yesterday, and I still haven't lost that feeling of

And it turns out I have tomorrow off too, before settling back down to a regular five-day week of eight-hour shifts, so that's another weekend The first one (Thurs and Fri) was purely for relaxation and doing nowt (although I somehow found the motivation to clean the bathroom, and finally toss out from the freezer all that suet that's been in there for... three years?). This one will be a bit more productive, including making that I've been threatening to make for a few weeks . I've made sure I'm really going to do it by thawing out the pork shoulder and pork belly, and buying some stock and gelatin for the jelly.

I seem to have run into a problem, -wise.

Originally I was going to make the recipe that uses a springform cake tin to make one big pie, but then I couldn't find the bottom of the tin anywhere. Most perplexing I've made this recipe before, the second time I made a pork pie. The first time I tried to do it the proper, hand-raised way, but since I don't have a wooden dolly for forming the pastry around I took the recipe's advice and used a jar.

What a nause A dolly has a flat, or maybe slightly convex bottom, whereas jars mostly have a concave one, and that means suction. You can't get the ing pastry off the jar As well as that, I did what I reckon most people do when they try to hand-raise a hot-water crust pie shell and take the recipe's advice about not letting the pastry get cold a bit too literally and try to work it while it's too warm, which means it's too soft to work. I did try wrapping the jar in clingfilm, another of the recipe's suggestions, but that didn't work either, for the aforestated reason - the pastry was too warm and couldn't hold its shape.

So making it in a cake tin seemed like the way forward, and it does indeed make a very nice , but I wasn't entirely happy or with it - I wanted to make the real, hand-raised, thing. However, I'd decided to make it in the tin again this time and had all the ingredients prepared for said recipe, until I noticed that the cake tin bottom had gone AWOL.

In the end I found that it had fallen down behind the toaster oven, but by that point I'd decided to bite the bullet and grasp the nettle (ow), and do it properly. What to use for a dolly though? Ah, my flour shaker looks like the ideal thing Yes, it has a slight indentation in the bottom, but having sussed out by now that I was using the pastry too warm, I let it cool down far more than previously, and hey presto - a little mis-shapen, but I have four pie shells ready for filling, and enough pastry left over for four lids

But for some reason, even though I prepared a few ounces more filling but made about 30% more pastry than in the recipe, because it calls for a 20cm cake tin and mine is bigger by about an inch in diameter, I find that I still have about half of the filling (chopped pork shoulder, chopped pork belly, chopped bacon, sage, thyme, anchovy paste, salt, pepper, mace) left over.

I'm not sure what to do with it. I already have out of the oven and cooling on the countertop - enough to last me at least until the end of the week and probably beyond, figuring that each one will last me two days. The pork shoulder and pork belly was previously frozen, and I know you're not supposed to refreeze meat once it's been thawed, even though I have actually thawed and re-frozen the pork belly. But it's probably not going to keep in the fridge for more than a week, if that, and since it's filling it's really only good for one thing - making another with.

What to do?

I suppose I could always buy more more flour and lard on the way home from work tomorrow and make enough hot water crust pastry for another (and possibly ), and freeze those

I wonder if you could use it to make some kind of corned beef hash style dish...not sure how that would turn out, though.

>>I know you're not supposed to refreeze meat once it's been thawed<<

However, the previously frozen meat was raw. It is now cooked. It can be refrozen. Srsly.

My previously frozen Turkey at Christmas was cooked and refrozen on Boxing day. It was fine.

It's raw meat that's not supposed to be refrozen. Perhaps I wasn't clear about that. Once it's cooked I think of it as a dish rather than meat, even if it's a joint of pork or a whole chicken. I know it's okay to freeze cooked meat that's previously been frozen.

I wanna come to your house and eat all this real food you make! I've entirely lost energy for any real cooking... I've turned into such a total slob and... its horrible!

Could you use the filling to make a terrine - i.e. a pie without the pastry?

That's a good idea. I've never made a terrine.

I reckon I'll be having one of the for breakfast this morning. At work. Because I have to be in at 7am, which means getting up at 5am and leaving before 6.00 in order to be there on time because of the Austin buses

You shouldn't have to eat breakfast in the middle of the night

Porkpies, scotch eggs, for breakfast, is the food of Kings! seriously.... Its almost a standard pre-treatment meal o r me, as I've never got up early enough to cook anything and its easy to grab from the fridge/cupboard protein, carbohydrate, fat, all the essential nutrients one needs.... full stop

The was . Pastry's a bit on the thick side but everything tastes like it should

I re-froze the filling.

Aren't I a little tinker